Thanks, Madam Chair. I don't want to speak too long about this but I think part of the issue here was we were one of the last jurisdictions to negotiate an agreement with the federal government, and when it was signed, I think it was in December of last year, and of course one of the objectives of the federal government was to try to reduce fees for parents, try to institute basically some program of $10 a day child care across the country. And given the timing of the agreement when it was finally signed and the need to get these caps or try to meet the federal objective, it led to I think some poor communications and sense of service providers being told what they could do.

So on the one hand, they're being told that they could not raise revenues. And then the next step was to actually try to improve the situation for staff and the training certification, the pay grid for them. And those are all good and noble things but if you're an operator, all you can think about is gee, now I'm going to have pay my workers more. So they're being squeezed at both ends in terms of the revenue and then being told that you're going to have to spend more money and there's no consistent or even clear messaging that support for the service providers is actually going to be increased in any way to try to compensate for being squeezed at both ends. And I think there was a communications failure. And I think some of it's related to the timing of this but some of it -- now we're in a very difficult situation of trying to do everything at once, and the bill that came forward to committee is very limited in scope. As the chair said in his -- maybe not even the right way to try to rebuild some trust and confidence amongst operators and between operators and the department.

I do want to commend the department and staff for working very hard to try to rebuild some of that working relationship and trust and confidence. And I know that they continue to do that work. But it's a very difficult situation for parents, families, and the providers when there doesn't seem to be a lot of certainty for where this is all going. So I think we really need to improve communications. They probably need to devote more resources in terms of staff within ECE to this function as well and work more collaboratively with the service providers, and I think some of the recommendations are really aimed at trying to address those bigger issues and concerns that are -- go well beyond the scope of the bill. Thanks, Madam Chair.

And I -- sorry, I do want to thank the committee for all their hard work in trying to find ways to address the concerns and issues that were being raised, even if you couldn't -- if they couldn't -- they didn't have the ability to address it through legislative change, the recommendations I think try to find some creative ways to address some of these issues and come up with some solutions collaboratively with the department and the Minister. Thanks, Madam Chair.